1. Field Of The Invention
The present invention pertains to fabrics used in furniture construction and particularly to fabrics which are utilized as decking suspension materials on furniture articles such as sofas to support seat cushions.
2. Description Of The Prior Art And Objectives Of The Invention
Upholstered sofas and chairs which employ individual seat cushions are conventionally constructed with a seat frame which supports the cushions generally around the cushion edges or perimeters. However, additional support of a resilient nature is needed directly under the cushion body and a variety of support mechanisms in the past have been employed such as banks of coil springs, sinuous springs which span the frame, Dymetrol.RTM. fabric (DuPont trademark) which includes a Hytrel.RTM. (DuPont trademark) monofilament yarn woven in the "fill" direction. Certain elastic webbings have also been used in the past as decking, but such webbings will deteriorate over an extended period due to ozone and other detrimental environmental agents.
All prior attempts at supporting sofa cushions have met with some degree of success, yet all have had shortcomings which the present invention attempts to overcome. More particularly, metal coil and sinuous springs used in the past have been expensive, unwieldy and difficult to incorporate into sofa and chair frames. Also, once incorporated such mechanisms oftentimes break, become weak over time and can puncture the decking fabric used to cover them. Fabrics such as Dymetrol.RTM. used without supporting coil springs or other mechanisms are expensive to use since they can only be purchased in a limited variety of sizes, thereby creating substantial trim waste during the furniture construction. In order to stabilize woven fabrics employing Hytrel.RTM. or other similar yarns, the fabric is heat set after production and thus the Hytrel.RTM. filaments must be coextruded with an outer filament layer, so the outer layer will melt into the woven polyester fibers of the fabric. Thus, the extrusion provides another difficult and time consuming manufacturing step, increasing the cost of the fabric.
With the aforesaid problems known, the present invention was conceived and one of its objectives is to provide a superior decking suspension material which can be used without the necessity of underlying springs, elastic webbing or other supports.
It is another objective of the present invention to provide a decking material which is relatively easy to handle and inexpensive to purchase.
It is yet another objective of the present invention to provide a decking material which is durable and which will provide the proper resiliency and feel for the user when installed.
It is still another objective of the present invention to provide a decking material which can be supplied in rolls of various lengths and widths as required for particular furniture manufacturers and upholsterers.
It is yet still another objective of the present invention to provide a decking material which, in one embodiment is formed from a knitted fabric having a ten (10) to thirty-five (35) gauge oriented polyester monofilament elastomeric yarn incorporated therein for resiliency and strength.
It is a further objective of the present invention to provide a decking suspension material in another embodiment which can be formed from a variety of base fabrics or materials and which includes a ten (10) to thirty-five (35) gauge oriented polyester elastomeric yarn sewn therein in multiple parallel rows.
Various other objectives and advantages of the present invention become apparent to those skilled in the art as a more detailed presentation is set forth below.